Jill Nussinow--
Michael Pollancommunication or journalism. Michael Pollan became a famous writer. I became a writer with much less status but still with something to say.
- Foods are the sum of their nutrient parts. Nutrients matter.
- You need experts to tell you how to eat. He likens this process to religion - and discusses the relationship of food and health.
- Nutritionism divides foods into good and evil nutrients which has led us to where we are now in terms of the obesity epidemic.
- The whole point of eating is health. Food and eating are on the ruining your health or saving your life spectrum. But what about other perfectly legitimate reasons for eating such as pleasure, community, cultural identity?
Pollan said, "I don't think that science knows enough to tell us what to eat." Agreed -- nutrition science is young. That's why I prefer to follow Mother Nature's need. He likens where we are to surgery in the year 1650 -- "it's interesting to watch but you don't want them to work on you yet," he says.
He suggests that if we tune into nature more and look at our past, we can likely figure out a better way to eat.
People who eat an incredible range of traditional diets around the world do not suffer from the chronic modern diseases such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, that are rampant in the US population who eat the SAD (Standard American Diet) of mostly processed food.
And we can roll back the effects of the SAD diet by changing how you eat.
Here are some of the 64 rules in Food Rules that Pollan shared. Remember:
Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.
Avoid foods that make health claims, need a package and a big marketing budget.
The healthiest food is in the produce section. AT this point in the talk, I am smiling wide and patting myself on the back (at least figuratively). He said, "Don't be fooled by the silence of the yams, that they won't contribute to your health."
Don't buy any foods that you see advertised on television. (Big marketing budget at work.)
If it came from a plant, eat it. Woo hoo. Now I am internally cheering.
If it grew in a plant or a laboratory, avoid it. (Please say no to Monsanto as they destroy our food system.)
Rule Number 63: Plant a garden. Make it a large vegetable garden if you have the space, or a window box garden if you don't have room. Get away from fast, cheap and easy food. You'll eat what your garden yields. And you'll save money.(Oh, yes.) A recent study showed that a $70 investment in a garden yields about $700 worth of food. And it will put you in touch with the earth.
Rule Number 64: COOK. It's the easiest way to take back control of your diet and to know where your food comes from. (At this point, I was floating, and thinking that this talk was too good to be true except it could have been me up there wowing the crowd.)
While I wish that it were me or some other Registered Dietitian, with the ability to see beyond nutrients and look at food for the goodness that it provides, doing the bidding and getting people interested in their food, I salute Michael Pollan for all that he’s done to help people wake people up to the state of our food and what we eat. I hope that all that he's doing will make a big difference. It already has for me.
Jill Nussinow, aka The Veggie Queen™, is a culinary educator, cookbook author and Registered Dietitian 
whose goal is to get consumers to eat more vegetables as the way to deliciously improve their health. She is the author of The Veggie Queen: Vegetables Get the Royal Treatment and is featured in the DVD Pressure Cooking: A Fresh Look, Delicious Dishes in Minutes.
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